


Torren's Land

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-17
Updated: 2009-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-11 22:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney's on Torren duty, and had no idea the day would turn out this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torren's Land

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Dogeared for most excellent beta duties, and to Setissma for talking about proboscis with me!

It's not as though watching Torren's a chore exactly, not when the kid is bright and funny and shows a prodigious talent for getting filthy that even his Uncle John can't match. It's simply that he has so much energy, Rodney muses, trailing along behind him through the woods at the edge of the settlement. "Books are wonderful things!" he shouts at Torren's back, swatting away a hellishly outsized flying insect of undoubtedly dubious origin. "Developmentally appropriate and best appreciated while sitting still, which is a skill I could help you with. I'm extremely well-qualified for that kind of instruction!"

Torren glances over his shoulder and giggles. He doesn't slow, shows no signs of stopping, just yells back, "Hurry!" and keeps trotting through the undergrowth, ducking beneath branches and rounding stumps that Rodney finds considerably more difficulty to circumvent. There's something intolerable about being outmaneuvered by a three year old, thinks Rodney as he's smacked in the chest by another sprouting _imlesh_ plant, and he's relieved when he finally tumbles out into the field of wildflowers, grasses, and rocks that Torren's so fond of, a stretch of New Athos known to everyone in shouting distance as Torren's Land.

"YEAH!" Torren says, arms above his head in what Rodney can only assume is a cheer, not that Torren knows about cheerleading, exactly, but some expressions of triumph seem to be universal. "I has rocks!"

"Rocks, yes. Nice stationary rocks," Rodney says, using the hem of his t-shirt to wipe off his brow. "Uncle Rodney's just going to sit here and . . . "

"No, no! Come an' see!" Torren orders, and Rodney hasn't the slightest idea why he does what he's told instead of setting boundaries and explaining that adults are in charge, but he makes it over to where Torren's squatting in the grass and flops down beside him.

"What? See what?" he asks.

"Shhhhh," Torren whispers, and points a finger at the insect that's sitting on a rock and looking right up into Rodney's face.

Rodney blinks for a second, wondering if he should bolt, but frankly he ate too much _bada_ soup at lunch and he's about as much hope of sprinting for his life as he has bursting into song. "Huh," he manages.

"What _is_ it?" Torren asks.

Rodney peers at the insect obligingly, but it's not as if staring will improve his knowledge of Pegasus entomology. "No idea."

Torren huffs.

"Look, I'm sorry," Rodney explains, "but I'm not from here, or around here, or _near_ here really, and even if I was, I'm not sure I'd know what it is because I tend to prefer to be indoors – indoors with a chair and a computer and coffee and minions, and it's not as if I remember _their_ names, much less the names of bugs."

"So we watch," Torren says authoritatively, and settles his chin on his knees. "We can ask momma later. Has legs."

Rodney briefly wonders if Torren's establishing that Teyla has limbs, but realizes they're still talking about insect life. "Yes, yes, legs. Um . . . six of them? Yes?"

Torren stretches his neck a little. "Six. Bendy."

"He probably jumps," Rodney suggests.

"He?"

"Or she. I, uh – don't know exactly how we'd figure out whether it's . . . you know." He waves a hand.

"Does it fly?"

"How do I . . . " Rodney shakes his head and dutifully bends forward, trying not to disturb the bug so much that it bounces away. "Maybe. It's almost like a grasshopper – the wings would be folded back beneath here?" He points in the general direction of where wings would be if the bug was on Earth and mysteriously inside his lab where no bug is allowed to visit.

"Grasshopper." Torren grins at him. "S'a good name. Hops grasses."

"Well, I don't know if it's a grasshopper _here_ , that's an Earth bug, but . . ."

"Torren Land has grasshoppers," Torren says as if that settles everything, and Rodney supposes it sort of does. "For hopping grasses."

"Okay." Rodney peers at the bug a little more. "It's a remarkable color. See how there's . . . almost gold over the red?"

"Shiny!" Torren says, pleased.

"And his antennae are very lovely – they're feathered at the end."

"What for?"

"Impossible to say without further study," Rodney muses. "There are all sorts of things they could be doing – checking wind speed or temperature, perhaps even sound; vibrations, hmm? That he can feel?"

"She."

"Maybe, yes. And on earth there are insects that even smell through their antennae. Those things might be his nose." He prods at Torren's own nose with a finger.

"Nawwww," Torren laughs.

"It's absolutely true! We'll check when I have access to a remote connection again, see if there's anything in the Ancient database. Or even ask your mother." He looks back at the bug. "What else?"

It's amazing, Rodney realizes some time later, how much there is to see in the world through Torren's eyes – color and texture, miracles in the scales on a red bug's back. He's never slowed to look at New Athos this way before, to see the scurrying of beetles and the seed heads on the grass; the bright orange stamen of an oversized poppy or the call of a _cheekra_ bird from the trees to their west. His heart rate slows – a new and impossible experience in Pegasus, he thinks wryly – while Torren reconstructs the universe from each breath of wind, each _affa_ seed drifting lazily by.

"It's not really a science, you know," he says vaguely, much later, lying on his back while the grasshopper sits curiously in the middle of Torren's hand. "I mean, there are excellent scientific principles at the heart of biology, don't get me wrong, but I can't help feeling they went astray. The scientists that is. Not the principles."

"You all right there, buddy?" someone calls, and Rodney looks up to see John making his way toward them. It might be the sun – he doesn't normally lie out beneath it in quite this fashion – or the scent of the _tiridik_ flowers, the influence of Torren's worldview, the study of an insect he never thought to know, but Rodney's not sure he's ever seen John quite this way before – the length of his forearms, the tilt of his mouth, the ease of his gait.

"I think you should be my bug," Rodney says just as Torren shouts "Uncle John, Uncle John, I has a grasshopper for hopping grasses, is a grasshopper, come see!"

John quirks an eyebrow – his nose is crooked, Rodney thinks; did he never notice his nose is crooked before? – and throws himself down in the grass beside them, a comfortable heap of sun-warmed limbs. "That's one hell of a bug," he says as Torren shoves the grasshopper right beneath his nose. "Think you can find it a friend to hang out with?"

Torren gasps and scrambles to his feet. "I look by the other rocks!" he says, cupping his hands gently around his bug. "I find it a bug town!" and he's running across the field.

"You are very crafty," Rodney murmurs, sun-drunk and happy. "And your jaw is very well-defined."

"My jaw, huh?" John says, propping himself up on one elbow. "You hit your head?"

"No, I just – " Rodney waves a hand idly and closes his eyes, smiling contentedly. "Watched a bug."

John laughs, warm breath pushing against Rodney's neck, then he's scooting in close, insinuating himself into Rodney's space, head on Rodney's shoulder so they're lying hip to hip. "I ate like, a hundred quarts of soup."

"Better not move," Rodney says, lifting a hand to run his fingers through John's unruly hair. "You might explode."

"I think you have sun stroke," says John, but he doesn't seem that worried.

"Bug stroke," Rodney counters, and they lie quietly in a borrowed corner of Torren's kingdom, listening to him explain the universe to an audience of bugs.

  


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art by chkc! ♥   



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